Editorial | Stepping up to help children

The Kosair Charities symbol of aid stands outside the new Child Advocacy Center.

After more than three years of planning, fund-raising and construction, supporters are celebrating an extraordinary new campus in Old Louisville dedicated to providing help for struggling families with a special focus on children who have suffered sexual abuse.

Today at 10:30 a.m., Family & Children's Place will cut the ribbon on the new facilities that include the restored, former Salvation Army building at Fifth and Kentucky streets as well as additional offices and landscaping that have dramatically upgraded the block.

There's a lot to celebrate, starting with the amazing generosity of the community that donated the $7.2 million it took to buy the property, upgrade the site and build the gleaming new facilities with colorful walls, large windows, cozy lounge areas and play areas for the frightened and traumatized children the center so often serves.

Dan Fox, CEO of Family & Children's Place, said center officials and the non-profit agency's board were apprehensive about raising so much money, especially during the economic downturn of the past few years. But led by some major donors - including the James Graham Brown Foundation, Kosair Charities, the Humana Foundation and Kindred Healthcare - the entire $7.2 million has been raised or pledged.

Individual donations, large and small, also poured in for the project.

In a time of government budget cuts and scarce public money for such services, that is a wonderful testament to how much this community cares. One of the largest donations, $2 million, came from Kosair Charities, which continues to be a leader in funding so many vital health and social services for children in the metro area.

The heart of the center's work is assessing and serving child sexual abuse victims and the new facility is to be named the Kosair Charities Child Advocacy Center.

A host of services for children and families once scattered around town will be housed at the site. They include work of physicians who examine children for suspected abuse, police who do the critical work of investigating the case in order to prosecute the abuser and social workers who help families affected by abuse.

It will allow the agency to pull together services such as the Louisville Metro Crimes Against Children Unit, until recently working out of a former warehouse, or the cramped quarters of the old Child Advocacy Center of Fourth Street, which had little parking and was accessible only through an alley behind a strip club.

The new site has plenty of parking, grass and trees and also features an historic African American schoolhouse at the corner of Sixth and Kentucky streets that was purchased and restored by the owner of a private marketing business.

The block also has a small city "pocket park" across the street that could use some refurbishment.

Perhaps the Old Louisville Neighborhood Council, which had opposed an early offer from Family & Children's Place to lease and upgrade the city-owned Ben Washer Park, could step up and help with needed improvements that include doing something about a boarded-up former community center on the grounds.

The new site also gives more visibility to the important work of the center that also operates counseling services, a "HANDS" program, which provides ongoing home visits for first-time young parents and services to help stabilize families at risk of homelessness.

And the cost of services is based on the client's ability to pay, free to those who can't.

The Louisville area is enriched with many, private, non-profit agencies that provide a huge range of services and Family & Children's Place, made stronger by the 2008 merger of two agencies, Children First and The Family Place, is among them.

Today, we thank the many donors who made this new campus possible and urge government officials and private donors to consider the value of such agencies and help them help those most in need.

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Editorial | Stepping up to help children

After more than three years of planning, fund-raising and construction, supporters are celebrating an extraordinary new campus in Old Louisville dedicated to providing help for struggling families